Half reclining on a sofa in the parlor of an elaborate suite of apartments was the woman whom Mr.Brimmer had a few hours before beheld on the stage of the theatre.Lifting her eyes languidly from a book that lay ostentatiously on her lap, she beckoned her visitor to approach.She was a woman still young, whose statuesque beauty had but slightly suffered from cosmetics, late hours, and the habitual indulgence of certain hysterical emotions that were not only inconsistent with the classical suggestions of her figure, but had left traces not unlike the grosser excitement of alcoholic stimulation.She looked like a tinted statue whose slight mutations through stress of time and weather had been unwisely repaired by freshness of color.
"I am such a creature of nerves," she said, raising a superb neck and extending a goddess-like arm, "that I am always perfectly exhausted after the performance.I fly, as you see, to my first love--poetry--as soon as Rosina has changed my dress.It is not generally known--but I don't mind telling YOU--that I often nerve myself for the effort of acting by reading some well-remembered passage from my favorite poets, as I stand by the wings.I quaff, as one might say, a single draught of the Pierian spring before Igo on."
The exact relations between the humorous "walk round," in which Miss Montgomery usually made her first entrance, and the volume of Byron she held in her hand, did not trouble Mr.Brimmer so much as the beautiful arm with which she emphasized it.Neither did it strike him that the distinguishing indications of a poetic exaltation were at all unlike the effects of a grosser stimulant known as "Champagne cocktail" on the less sensitive organization of her colleagues.Touched by her melancholy but fascinating smile, he said gallantly that he had observed no sign of exhaustion, or want of power in her performance that evening.
"Then you were there!" she said, fixing her eyes upon him with an expression of mournful gratitude."You actually left your business and the calls of public duty to see the poor mountebank perform her nightly task.""I was there with a friend of yours," answered Brimmer soberly, "who actually asked me to the supper to which Mr.Keene had already invited me, and which YOU had been kind enough to suggest to me a week ago.""True, I had forgotten," said Miss Montgomery, with a large goddess-like indifference that was more effective with the man before her than the most elaborate explanation."You don't mind them--do you?--for we are all friends together.My position, you know," she added sadly, "prevents my always following my own inclinations or preferences.Poor Markham, I fear the world does not do justice to his gentle, impressible nature.I sympathize with him deeply; we have both had our afflictions, we have both--lost.Good heavens!" she exclaimed, with a sudden exaggerated start of horror, "what have I done? Forgive my want of tact, dear friend; I had forgotten, wretched being that I am, that YOU, too"--She caught his hand in both hers, and bowed her head over it as if unable to finish her sentence.
Brimmer, who had been utterly mystified and amazed at this picture of Markham's disconsolate attitude to the world, and particularly to the woman before him, was completely finished by this later tribute to his own affliction.His usually composed features, however, easily took upon themselves a graver cast as he kept, and pressed, the warm hands in his own.
"Fool that I was," continued Miss Montgomery; "in thinking of poor Markham's childlike, open grief, I forgot the deeper sorrow that the more manly heart experiences under an exterior that seems cold and impassible.Yes," she said, raising her languid eyes to Brimmer, "I ought to have felt the throb of that volcano under its mask of snow.You have taught me a lesson."Withdrawing her hands hastily, as if the volcano had shown some signs of activity, she leaned back on the sofa again.
"You are not yet reconciled to Mr.Keene's expedition, then?" she asked languidly.
"I believe that everything has been already done," said Brimmer, somewhat stiffly; "all sources of sensible inquiry have been exhausted by me.But I envy Keene the eminently practical advantages his impractical journey gives him," he added, arresting himself, gallantly; "he goes with you.""Truly!" said Miss Montgomery, with the melancholy abstraction of a stage soliloquy."Beyond obeying the dictates of his brotherly affection, he gains no real advantage in learning whether his sister is alive or dead.The surety of her death would not make him freer than he is now--freer to absolutely follow the dictates of a new affection; free to make his own life again.It is a sister, not a wife, he seeks."Mr.Brimmer's forehead slightly contracted.He leaned back a little more rigidly in his chair, and fixed a critical, half supercilious look upon her.She did not seem to notice his almost impertinent scrutiny, but sat silent, with her eyes bent on the carpet, in gloomy abstraction.
"Can you keep a secret?" she said, as if with a sudden resolution.
"Yes," said Brimmer briefly, without changing his look.
"You know I am a married woman.You have heard the story of my wrongs?""I have heard them," said Brimmer dryly.
"Well, the husband who abused and deserted me was, I have reason to believe, a passenger on the Excelsior.""M'Corkle!--impossible.There was no such name on the passenger list.""M'Corkle!" repeated Miss Montgomery, with a dissonant tone in her voice and a slight flash in her eyes."What are you thinking of?
There never was a Mr.M'Corkle; it was one of my noms de plume.
And where did YOU hear it?"